The head of Russia's arms-trading agency says the nation has signed contracts to deliver fighter jets, air defense systems and armored vehicles to Syria.

Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation chief Mikhail Dmitriyev said Russia will sell MiG-29 fighter jets, Pantsyr short-range air defense systems and armored vehicles. He didn't give any numbers or provide any further details.

You've heard of book burnings, I'm sure, but what about food burnings?

Cold peace with Jordan: Israelis good were burned in Jordan Saturday, during protests against Israel in the Hashemite Kingdom's capital marking Nakba Day.

Hundreds of members of the Anti-Normalization Committee, which fights against normalization of economic relations with Israel, set fire to hundreds of fruit and vegetable crates imported from the Jewish neighbor.

The protest, held in Amman's central marketplace, came a day after Jordanian clerics issued a religious edict that forbids purchasing merchandise from Israel.

Well, I guess there's no need to waste money even delivering the food there. Sooner or later, just like Egypt, our rather awkward treaty with Jordan is going to collapse.

And it's sad but no surprise they're pushing the filthy lie of "nakba" even there.

Home of Swedish Muhammad cartoonist attacked — STOCKHOLM — The home of a Swedish artist who once drew a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog has been hit by a suspected arson attack, police said Saturday. — Lars Vilks, who lives in Nyhamnslage in southern Sweden …

Friday, May 14, 2010

Clearly, plants love CO2. Not only land plants, but sea sponges and photosynthetic plankton and sea bacteria throughout the oceans love CO2. Just a quick glance at the white chalk cliffs near Dover will tell you that sea life can make very good use of much higher concentrations of CO2 than humans have ever seen.

And yet, people who make a living by promoting a fear of CO2 continue to claim that CO2 is a pollutant, and that CO2 threatens land and sea life.

This State-of-the-Art report on the direct effects of CO2 on vegetation summarizes the current state of knowledge; it identifies uncertainties and suggests where more research is needed to assure understanding and delineates data and modeling requirements for future predictions. Important progress has been made over the past 5 years since the plant science community urged that more attention be given to direct effects of CO2 enrichment. Enhanced plant growth and yield from more CO2 is now widely recognized in different scientific and public sectors as an important element of the CO2 problem.

RELIAPUNDIT ADDS:

COMMERCIAL GREENHOUSE FOLKS HAVE KNOWN THIS FOR DECADES.

THEY BUY CO2 GENERATORS, WHICH ARE WIDELY MANUFACTURED AND MARKETED TO ENHANCE GROWING.

Turkey, Russia and Iran could form a 'coalition of the rejected,' according to an expert. ‘All three have strategic geopolitical locations.

All three have a long tradition of statehood,’ says Andrzej Ananicz, former director of the Polish Intelligence Agency, adding that they all have had state ideologies vilifying others and feeding nationalism.

... With the growing perception that Turkey will never join the European Union even if it fulfills all the criteria, the country could form a “coalition of the rejected” with fellow international outcasts Russia and Iran, according to a former Polish diplomat.

“The feelings of rejection can serve as the cement of the coalition,” Andrzej Ananicz, former director of the Polish Intelligence Agency, said while speaking this week at the Salzburg Global Seminar, which focused on the future of Turkey.

Asked by organizers to come up with a provocative scenario for Turkey’s foreign policy future, Ananicz said the “coalition of the rejected” option had already been voiced by a top military official, Tuncer Kılınç, when he was at the head of the powerful National Security Council.

Rejected by the EU, Turkey could seek to act together with Russia, which also feels excluded, as well as Iran, Kılınç said in 2002. He is currently among those who are accused of being part of an illegal group that allegedly aimed to topple the government.

The feeling of exclusion is not the only element that can unite the three countries, according to the former Polish ambassador to Ankara.

“All three have strategic geopolitical locations. All three have a long tradition of statehood,” he said, adding that they all have had state ideologies vilifying others and feeding nationalism. In addition, all three have problems with their minorities, he said.

When it comes to their relations with the rest of the world, there are again similarities, Ananicz said.

Christie ran on the principles he's governing by: cutting the size of government.

Obama has been governing on DIFFERENT principles than he ran on. Obama ran as a post-partisan, post-racial MODERATE/CENTRIST, but he's been extremely partisan, racist and governed from the extreme left.

That's why Obama and the Democrat have PLUMMETED in the polls. 15% of Obama's support came from centrists and independents who have concluded they made a BIG mistake.

And it's why Chris Christie's poll numbers WON'T plummet: he's just governing the way those who voted for him want him to govern. You can ask for more as a voter.

The White House is asking Congress to approve $205 million to help Israel build a new short-range rocket defense system, Obama administration officials confirmed Friday.

Called the Iron Dome, the security system "addresses Israelis' worries about errant rockets being fired into their homes" and is designed to intercept incoming rockets fired from Lebanon and Gaza, a senior administration official said.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor explained the administration's rationale, saying, "The president recognizes the threat missiles and rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah pose to Israelis, and has therefore decided to seek funding from Congress to support the production of Israel's short-range rocket defense system called Iron Dome."

Two senior administration officials said the $205 million would be in addition to the $3 billion the United States spends each year to promote Israel's defense.

"As the president has repeatedly said," Vietor added, "our commitment to Israel's security is unshakable, and our defense relationship is stronger than ever. The United States and our ally Israel share many of the same security challenges, from combating terrorism to confronting the threat posed by Iran's nuclear-weapons program."

One senior administration official said Michele Flournoy, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, called Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday to alert Israeli officials about the administration's new rocket funding.

That official said a U.S. team went to Israel last fall to see work on the Iron Dome system, and came away with the assessment that it was "a system that made sense."

THIS IS GOOD.

BUT REMEMBER: IRON DOME IS A DEFENSE-SYSTEM MEANT TO REACT TO ENEMY ATTACKS.

THEREFORE, BY ITS NATURE, IT IS NOT PROACTIVE; IT IS REACTIVE: IT'S USEFUL ONLY AFTER AN ATTACK HAD BEGUN.

IT'S A "FIRST RESPONDER".

IT WOULD BE BETTER IF OUR POLICIES WERE MORE FORWARD LEANING: IF WE SOUGHT TO DESTROY THOSE WHO WOULD ATTACK ISRAEL, RATHER THAN SEEK WAYS TO MINIMIZE SUCH ATTACKS.

RELYING ON A GOOD RESPONSE AFTER AN ATTACK IS, SADLY, THE PRIMARY MODE FOR OBAMA AND THE LEFT.

OBAMA'S ANTI-TERROR STRATEGY SEEMS TO BE TO RELY ON BAD-BOMB-MAKING ABILITIES OF THE ENEMY.

THIS WILL NOT ALWAYS WORK.

AND ONE SUCCESSFUL WMD ATTACK - IN THE USA OR ISRAEL - WILL MAKE "FIRST RESPONDERS" MEANINGLESS.

THEREFORE, IN ADDITION TO AIDING ISRAEL IN BUILDING AND DEPLOYING "IRON DOME", WE SHOULD BE AGGRESSIVELY TRYING TO ENFORCE UNSCR #1559,

Berlinski quotes this passage from Politburo minutes of a discussion of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989:

Lukyanov reports that the real number of casualties on Tiananmen Square was 3,000.

Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to defend themselves. Three thousands . . . So what?

So what, indeed! What’s the death of 3,000 unarmed men and women when it comes to preserving the power of the dictatorial state? One must crack a few (thousand) bourgeois eggs to make the Communist omelette, after all.

That comes to light again in a transcript of a Gorbachev conversation with a West German politician in which he defends a similar massacre of protesters in Tbilisi by Soviet troops.

A very surprising case has come up, related to the Rifqa Bary case. A writer for ZEEK, an affiliate of the Forward, whose name is Rachel Tabachnick, attacked Phyllis Chesler for her defense of Rifqa Bary, and the item is hostile to Christian Zionists as well. Chesler has more to say about this over here.

This Tabachnick is not just being unfair by claiming Chesler has direct contact with Rifqa's defenders, when she felt it better to just cover the case from a distance, she is also endangering the life of a young girl. And she's also providing another poor example for leftist Jews by refusing to help someone in distress. Is that the kind of example the Forward wants to set?

Here's more from Robert Stacy McCain and The American Spectator. Nice to see some more major conservatives are taking notice of this case. Even now, I'm still astounded at how some right wing sources flatly refused to make any mention of Bary's problems, including some of the same ones who brought up other cases of victims of Islamic honor murders. Is it really that much easier to talk about someone who's dead than someone who's still alive?

The Portuguese government Thursday followed Spain’s lead in agreeing with the main opposition party on more austerity measures to cut the deficit faster than planned, to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product next year from 9.4 percent last year.

To help restore investor confidence, José Sócrates, the Socialist prime minister, will rely on tax increases and cuts in wages and corporate subsidies to erase an additional €2.1 billion, or $2.7 billion, from the deficit. “These measures are necessary to obtain what’s essential, the financing of the Portuguese economy, but also to defend the euro,” Mr. Sócrates said.

Fashion is a form of self-expression. It's all about experimenting with looks and, in many cases, attracting attention.

The Islamic headscarf, or hijab, is exactly the opposite. It's about modesty and attracting as little attention as possible.

However, a growing number of Muslim women are successfully blending the two.

They get inspiration from the catwalk, the high street and fashion magazines, and they give it a hijab-friendly twist - making sure that everything except the face and hands are covered.

They are known as Hijabistas.

Jana Kossiabati is editor of the blog Hijab Style , which gets as many as 2,300 visits a day from across the world, including Africa, Middle East and the United States.

"I started two-and-a-half years ago," says Jana, who is British of Lebanese origin.

"I'd seen so many fashion blogs and so many Muslim blogs but hadn't seen anything specifically dedicated to the way Muslim women dress.

"I started my own site to bring together elements of what Muslim women are looking for and to make mainstream fashion wearable and relevant to them."

SICKENING.

THE BBC IS USUALLY ATTACKING THE CHURCH (LIKE THEIR COMRADES AT THE NYTIMES) AND HERE THEY'RE ACTUALLY PROMOTING THE HIJAB - AN INTEGRAL PART OF ISLAMO-MISOGYNY: A WOMAN MUSTN'T SHOW ANYONE HER HAIR!!!

THE BBC AND THE NYTIMES ARE TYPICAL POSTMODERN LEFTISTS: IF IT HURTS THE WEST, THEN THEY'RE FOR IT.

CAMERON SHOULD DUMP THE BBC TO SAVE MONEY - AND TO SAVE BRITAIN FROM BURGEONING DHIMMITUDE AND CREEPING SHARIA.

Americans are living nearly two-and-a-half months longer, according to new life expectancy statistics released today. In 2007, life expectancy in the United States reached a high of nearly 78 years, up from 77.7 a year earlier.

Life expectancy in the United States has been on the rise for a decade, increasing 1.4 years — from 76.5 years in 1997 to 77.9 in 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The life expectancy data, compiled by the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics, are based on nearly 90 percent of the death certificates filed in the United States.

Doctors say that not only is lifespan increasing, but more important, the “active” lifespan is increasing as well.

ALL DURING THE BUSH YEARS AMERICA LIFE EXPECTANCY WENT UP. FOR EVERYONE.

WHEN OBAMA AND THE LEFT TELL YOU WE PAY MORE FOR HEALTHCARE THAN THE EU AND DO WORSE THEY LIE. Posted by Reliapundit @ 5:59 PM ; Permalink WHY DOES THE LEFT LIE!?!?!

CUZ THE TRUTH AIN'T ON THEIR SIDE!

IF THE LEFT DIDN'T LIE, THEN THEY'D HAVE NOTHING GOOD TO SAY ABOUT THEIR OWN POLICIES!

On Wednesday's Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, host Dylan Ratigan didn't see any point to continuing the war in Afghanistan and slammed military air strikes against terrorist targets as: "kids with joysticks in New Jersey and Las Vegas dropping predator bombs on civilians willy-nilly." [Audio available here]

WTF?!

OBVIOUSLY THIS IGNORANT ASSHOLE RATIGAN HAS NEVER WATCHED OR LISTENED TO A VIDEO OF WHAT OUR DRONE AND CHOPPER AND JET GUYS HAVE TO GO THROUGH BEFORE THEY GET CLEARANCE TO ATTACK!

HERE'S A DEMONSTRATION:

THESE ARE NOT TEENS WILLY-NILLY ATTACKING CIVILIANS.

HERE'S HOW IT'S USED:

THERE IS NOTHING WILLY-NILLY ABOUT THIS.

AND HERE'S A REAL ATTACK:

YOU CAN SEE, IT'S NOT WILLY-NILLY; IT'S NOT POINT-AND-SHOOT. THEY STUDY THE TARGETS AND GET LEGAL PERMISSION TO ATTACK THEM. ENGAGE THEM.

LISTEN TO THIS EXCHANGE - BEFORE AN APACHE ATTACK IN AFGHANISTAN:

THERE IS OBVIOUSLY NOTHING WILLY-NILLY ABOUT OUR TARGETING.

NOTHING.

TO ARGUE THAT IT IS A WILLY-NILLY STRATEGY IS A SLANDEROUS & TREASONOUS LIE. RATIGAN IS AN IGNORANT PIECE OF RAT-SHIT FOR SAYING IT.

THE ONLY WILLY-NILLY THING IS THE CRAPPY INSANITY THAT DISCHARGES BULLSHIT BETWEEN IGNORANT ASSHOLE RATIGAN'S EARS.

BUT... IT GET WORSE:

IGNORANT ASSHOLE RATIGAN ALSO ARGUED THAT THE USA ARMED THE TALIBAN TO DEFEAT THE USSR - AND HIS IGNORANT GUESTS AGREED.

EXCERPT:

He [RATIGAN] then asked [HIS GUEST] Goodfriend:

"Is there a rational defense that you have heard for America being in Afghanistan a decade after we went in to degrade the Taliban?"

As Goodfriend began to answer, Ratigan interrupted and proclaimed:

"And every soldier, every journalist, every person you talk to says, 'I don't know why we're in Afghanistan.'"

The most credible and often-repeated story of how Mullah Omar first mobilized his followers is that in the spring of 1994 Singesar neighbors told him that a warlord commander had abducted two teenage girls, shaved their heads and taken them to a camp where they were raped repeatedly. 30 Taliban (with only 16 rifles) freed the girls and hung the commander from the barrel of a tank. Later that year two warlord commanders killed civilians while fighting for the right to sodomize a young boy. The Taliban freed him.[25][26]

A new Pew poll found strong support for immigration law enforcement and strong disapproval of the administration’s handling of immigration policy:

73% say they approve of requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them. Two-thirds (67%) approve of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify their legal status, while 62% approve of allowing police to question people they think may be in the country illegally…the public is highly critical of Barack Obama’s handling of immigration policy. Just 25% approve of the way Obama is handling the issue, while more than twice as many (54%) disapprove.

WSJ: “President Barack Obama harshly criticized an Arizona measure to crack down on illegal immigration and made clear Friday that he is looking for an election-year fight over the volatile issue…

OBAMACARE, THE STIMULUS (THAT PRODUCED ZERO NEW JOBS), AND IMMIGRATION: IT'S A RIGHT-WING TRIFECTA.

The Department of Homeland Security told congressional officials Wednesday that it’s moving to make cuts in anti-terror funding to New York City, less than two weeks after cops helped thwart and attempted car bombing in Times Square – an effort the White House has since pinned on the Pakistani Taliban.

The cuts, lawmakers were told, amount to about 25 percent for port security, and another 27 percent for transit security, according to several reports.

It “just makes no sense at all, particularly in light of recent events,” Sen. Charles Schumer told cable station NY1’s “Inside City Hall.” “The worst nightmare we probably face is some kind nuclear device placed in a container in the ship in the harbor and exploding….we need all the help we can get.”

I suppose we can hope then that he won't be voting for Obama in the next election either? Because this is getting very aggravating already.

Al-Qaida operatives who have been detained [SHOULD READ "detained"] for years in Iran have been making their way quietly in and out of the country, raising the prospect that Iran is loosening its grip on the terror group so it can replenish its ranks, former and current US intelligence officials said in a statements published Thursday.

This shift could indicate that Iran is re-examining its murky relationship with al-Qaida at a time when the US is stepping up drone attacks in Pakistan and weakening the group's leadership.

Any influx of manpower could hand al-Qaida a boost in morale and expertise and threaten to disrupt stability in the region.

US officials said the intelligence points to a worrisome increase in movement lately.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

It’s about 2,500 miles from this green, rural town in the rolling hills near Vermont to the Mexican border at Nogales, but that hasn’t stopped Jackson from making a bid to be New York’s small version of Arizona in the immigration wars.

Or that’s how it is beginning to feel two months after Jackson — which has 1,700 people, no village, no grocery store or place to buy gasoline, no church, no school, two restaurants and maybe a few Spanish-speaking farm workers — decided it needed a law requiring that all town business be conducted in English.

One nearby town, Argyle, has since passed a similar resolution. A third, Easton, is likely to consider one at its Town Board meeting in June. The law has already put Jackson at odds with the New York Civil Liberties Union, which says it violates state and federal law. But in the great American echo chamber, every mouse gets to roar, so Roger Meyer, who proposed the law, feels he is making progress toward protecting the English language from threats near and far.

“For too long, the federal government has shirked its duty by not passing English as the official language of the United States,” said Mr. Meyer, 76, a Town Council member and retiree who runs Chains Unlimited, a sawmill and chain saw and logging supply company. “So seeing as this law couldn’t be passed from the top down, I felt I’d start a grass-roots movement to try to get it passed from the bottom up.”

THAT'S WHAT THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT IS ALL ABOUT: FROM THE BOTTOM UP - AND THIS NOVEMBER, IT'S GONNA BE HUGE!

OBAMA IS WORSE THAN A COCKY LYING BASTID WHO JUST WANTSA GETS HIS ROCKS OFF WITH THE CHICK HE'S WITH AND WHO CAN SEE SHE'S GOT A HUGE CRUSH ON HIM AND WHO IS WILLING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF HER AND TELL ANY LIE SO HE CAN "DO IT."

IT'S REALLY LIKE OBAMA IS RAPING AMERICA AND TELLING US WE'RE GONNA LIKE IT.

From 1918 to 1948 the ONLY people who referred to themselves as "Palestinians" were Jews living under British colonial rule. The Arabs referred to themselves as Arabs - part of the Ummah. Or as Syrians or as Egyptians.

From 1949 to 1967 when the PLO spoke of the "liberation" of "Palestine" they meant eliminating Israel and replacing it with another Arab state or states, not establishing another Arab state somewhere/anywhere else.

Until 1993 and OSLO, the Arabs hadn't even ever accepted the idea of a two-state solution; they wanted Israel erased from the maps.

Now, SOME Arabs claim to be willing to accept a two-state solution, but still: it means something fundamentally unfair: one state for Jews & Arabs, and another Judenrein state just for Arabs. They do not accept that Jews can live in the West Bank any more than in Gaza. But they expect Arabs to be able to remain in Israel.

That is not a formula for peace. There cannot be real peace until Jews can live as safely in Arab countries as Arabs can in Israel.

And there can never be any "peace deal" that demands Arabs take control over so-called "east Jeruslaem". The Muslim claim on Jerusalem has been proven to be an historical sham - A LIE. Jerusalem isn't mentioned ONCE in the Koran - not by it's proper name or any euphemism. NOT ONCE.

On Wednesday, Dahe Bao, a newspaper in Henan Province, quickly posted on the Internet a fiery editorial that pointed to misbehavior by government officials as the root cause of the problem.

“After being treated unfairly or being bullied by the authorities, and unable to take revenge on those government departments that are safeguarded by state security forces, killers have to let out their hatred and anger on weaker people, and campuses have become the first choice,” said the editorial, signed by a writer named Shi Chuan.

HMMM: SEEMS TO ME THAT THE LEFTISTS AT THE NYTIMES ARE BLAMING IT ON TEA PARTIERS!

I THINK - BASED ON THE TARGETS - IT'S MORE LIKELY THAT MAYBE IT HAS TO DO WITH THE CHINESE GOV'T'S CHILDBIRTH/MARRIAGE/AND FAMILY POLICIES.

Today, it's Jerusalem Day, where we celebrate the reunification of the legendary city and liberation from Jordan's vicious takeover that lasted for 2 decades until 1967. I'm going to point to this item by Isi Leibler, who's a contributor for the Jerusalem Post, about some of the history, and how, if there's any problems that need to be dealt with now, it's the Obama administration, and the Islamists, who refuse to recognize Israel's right to it's city.

Lars Rieks, who gained notioriety for his Muhammad drawing that combined the head of a human with the body of a dog, was attacked by intolerant islamists while delivering a lecture at Upsala University in Sweden. See video here. Inspite of considerable police presence the attacker seems to have eluded authorities.

Brown has to stop sitting on his hands, halt British weapons exports and insist the EU do the same

... the world's leaders must accept that their response to the election of Hamas has been a strategic failure. The removal of the EU presence on the Egypt border in response to Hamas's election, for example, has made it easier for the rockets being fired at Israel to get into Gaza in the first place. An EU mission with a serious mandate and backing from Egypt and Israel would help Israel deal proportionately and effectively with the threat from weapons smuggling.

Attempts to divide and rule the Palestinians by isolating and punishing Gaza will not succeed. To secure peace in the Middle East, Hamas must turn its back on terrorism, and help create Palestinian unity. Only unified leadership in the West Bank and Gaza can offer Israel the security guarantees that it rightly seeks.

My proposals to stay Israel's hand in this conflict may be unwelcome to some, but they have the country's long term interest at heart. No terrorist organisation has ever been defeated by bombs alone. Only a new approach will secure lasting peace for Israel itself.

The Liberal Democrats who hope to play the spoilers on May 6 is home to an even greater proportion of Israel-haters than is the Labour hard-Left. As for the Conservatives, JID gives them some credit: “The tone of party pronouncements on Israel are notably sympathetic. William Hague, a former party leader and now Shadow Foreign Secretary, criticized Labor for not voting against the Goldstone Report.”

However, Melanie Phillips points out in her Spectator blog that Tory leader David Cameron, whom she prefers to call “David Obameron,” is promising to line up as a loyal soldier in the Obama administration’s diplomatic war on Israel. As evidence she cites the following in an interview with Cameron in the Financial Times published on March 31 (subscription required):

FT: Yes. You managed to tell Mr. Netanyahu that he might want to revise his position on settlements.

DC: I have. Unlike a lot of politicians from Britain who visit Israel, when I went, I did stand in occupied East Jerusalem and actually referred to it as occupied East Jerusalem. The Foreign Office bod who was with me said, most ministers don’t dare say. So, yes, I thought I had quite an argument when I was in Israel with Tzipi Livni about settlements and I think Obama is right to take a robust line. I think we have to but it is depressing how little progress is being made right now.

So Cameron — whose skimmed-milk New Age version of conservatism may wind up pulling defeat from the jaws of victory in the coming ballot — not only brags about his disdain for a united Jerusalem and his disagreement with the leader of the opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on the fate of Jerusalem but expresses support for Obama’s diplomatic offensive against the Jewish state.

STAY TUNED...

UPDATE: LIAM FOX IS MINISTER OF DEFENSE - HE'S A DR. AND A HAWK AND AN ATLANTICIST AND A ZIONIST. WM HAGUE IS FOREIGN SECRETARY - ALSO A FRIEND OF ISRAEL

The mere fact that this rescue package will provide loan guarantees to the very countries that boast the largest welfare states and can’t afford to pay for them probably suggests that the loan guarantees will guarantee more welfarism.

There’s a lot of talk about belt-tightening and spending cuts. But where’s the enforcement mechanism? No one knows. This is the Achilles’ heel of the whole European Union experiment. The monetary discipline has now been broken while the sought-after fiscal discipline is still broken.

If the trillion-dollar European package succeeds in calming lending markets and stopping an outright credit freeze-up, that’s good, at least in the short run.

We scooped everyone on this too. Back in December of 2009, as the world was crashing down on the Global Warming idiots, I predicted that the next hysteria "environmentalists" would try to scare us with is peak water.

... there is a crisis coming even sooner involving the most precious resource, absolutely vital to life — water.And when water becomes scarce, there will be inadequate food as plants are pretty thirsty. How can this be, when about 70 percent of our planet is covered by ocean water?Most plants, animals and people can’t drink salt water, needing fresh water. 70 percent of the world’s fresh water is frozen on top of Antarctica.Most of the remaining fresh water is deep inside the Earth in huge underground lakes called aquifers

The problem is close to home:

In some agricultural areas of California, the ground level has dropped 30 feet from excessive draining of aquifers.The Colorado River no longer empties into the Gulf of California (Mexico) as all of its water has been taken by irrigation.Decades from now, when there will be little snow pack in the Northwestern states, some large western rivers will have even less flow, and large U.S. hydroelectric facilities in the West will no longer supply much of their current electric power.

But outside the US the problem is even worse:

Yemen’s aquifers around some of its cities are nearly gone.Saudi Arabia is phasing out its wheat crop as its large aquifer will be nearly exhausted in a decade.In upper China, the large fossil aquifer (which is not easily recharged) is being drawn down several meters a year.Near Beijing, water wells go down a kilometer (0.6 mile) to get water for the city’s inhabitants.It is even worse in India as many wells have gone dry and in some regions, half of the electricity is being used to pull up water for people and crops.

I covered the problem in India here. Briefly, Norman Borlaug was said to be the father of the “green revolution” and won a Nobel Prize for feeding billions. The problem was that his techniques required fossil fuels and lots of fossil ground water. The party is about over in India as fossil fuels become increasingly expensive and the ground aquifer is nearly pumped dry.

Carbon based lifeforms like we humans can live without oil and natural gas but not without water. For that reason as we attempt to satisfy our addiction to fossil fuels we must think seriously about threats to our water supplies. The energy companies tell us we can have both but their record is not very good. Coal mining in Appalachia has resulted in the pollution of much of the area’s surface water. Disposal of coal ash from power plants also threatens water. More recently “fracking” for natural gas has been in the headlines.

New Yorkers have been talking/protesting a lot about proposed natural gas drilling upstate, where much of our esteemed, tasty tap water originates. The issue: whether the industrial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a threat to the watershed.But as the United States becomes “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas” , this debate is happening all over the country.The Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday it will re-investigate hydraulic fracturing, in which water, sand, and unidentified chemicals are shot into natural gas wells at high pressure. The procedure opens up gas reserves locked underground by various geological formations.

Of course, the United States, the world's most successful country, is the biggest abuser. Of course. Because Capitalism is the problem, you see. Therefore, Capitalism will have to be attacked, and destroyed, or else we will run out of water, everyone and everything will die, and earth itself ... well, you get the drill.

And all of this rests on the completely unscientific, false assumption that once you use the water it disappears.

Water does not disappear. It changes form.

When you cook, water evaporates ... and then comes back down to earth in the form of rainfall, dew, etc.

When you irrigate crops, water evaporates and/or get transferred into the plants, where it is stored, and consequently ends up in the digestive systems of human beings and animals.

When you drink water, or ingest anything which has water in it - which is everything you eat - it goes through your system, and comes out as urine which contains, get this, WATER ...

... which then evaporates, and comes down in the form of rainfall, dew, etc.

And, of course, this "we're running out of water and we must do something about it right now" scenario also rests on the assumption that we will develop no new technology which will help us harvest water.